The barriers lifted and we bumped our bikes over the rumble strips and up the ramp. Behind us, motorbikes revved up and children scampered back into their campervans. It was 5pm on a warm, muggy Friday evening in August and it was clear that the weekend couldn’t start soon enough for the waiting passengers.

Ushered to the front of the boat, we lent the bikes against the raised exit ramp, asking twice to make sure that there was no risk of the ramp deploying mid-voyage sending our bikes for a dip in the Solent. Across the water, beyond the white sails of yachts making use of the evening breeze, the Isle of Wight stretched out hazily on the horizon. (more…)

Early the next morning, we rolled off the ferry into a grey,cold drizzle that masked the industrial toughness of Le Havre. It was hard to motivate ourselves to get moving after a breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolat in town, where our confident French practice from the previous day was found out quickly by the perplexed locals.

Having forced ourselves to get into the saddle, we picked up a local cycle route to escape this industrial maze of a city, but still managed to get lost in a car park on the edge of town. We were soon joined by an-equally lost Josh, a cyclist from the ferry who was heading off on his first bicycle trip: to Barcelona. His route wasn’t planned, so he decided to join us for the day as he figured we were going broadly in the right direction for him. (more…)

London to Paris, everybody does it differently. Some people jump on their road bikes and race it in 24 hours, for others it is the challenge of a lifetime and they raise thousands for charity as they take several days to make their way south. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but if you’re a cyclist, you must at some point.

We’d had it on our wish list for years, but at last we had a date and, excitedly, company having persuaded our friends Tom and Katie to come along over an extended May bank-holiday weekend. Our plan was to take a relatively leisurely pace following the Avenue Verte, a signposted route between the two capitals, via a ferry crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe. (more…)

We’ve been back in London for a while now, but our bikes have made less of an appearance around town. Before we left for South America, we both commuted to work and used our bikes for generally getting around, but since we returned we’ve been pedalling less and less. Why?(more…)

In October, with one week left before Paddy had to go back to work, we decided to take the bikes away to escape reality. With only a few days available and looking for some fun rather than a challenge we decided to head to Norfolk to explore a part of the UK neither of us knew.

Home to the Broads and hundreds of canal boats, Norfolk is famous for being flat. We had a great few days pedalling around the Queen’s backyard and hope to return for a longer tour when time allows. (more…)